Texas Instruments Inc (TXN)

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The Real Secrets of TI

http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2005/03/the_real_secret.html

Om Malik reports on a conversation he had with Texas Instruments CEO Rich Templeton:

Often Silicon Valley insiders wonder how Texas Instruments continue to do well in every new digital market that comes along? Answer is simple – the company from top man down believes that it’s the applications, not the guts of a technology that drives the end-user demand. Sticking to that philosophy has helped Texas Instruments become a major force in four high growth markets - broadband, digital home, voice-over-the-packet, and cellular phones. In a dinner and a very candid conversation with dozen odd journalists in San Francisco, Texas Instruments CEO Rich Templeton said that Moore’s Law--20 percent more performance for 20% less cost--has been the engine of growth for nearly 40 years and will continue to be just that as long companies know how to harness the power of the ever powerful transistors. “The consumers won’t go out and buy a 3G phone, but instead will buy a camcorder phone, just like they buy camera phones, color screens,” says Templeton, pointing out that the consumers don’t care about the plumbing. He does have a point. Once you have a broadband connection, you don’t care whether your email comes through a DSL connection or web pages load faster because you have a cable modem. TI, he says, is focused on making the experience seamless and easy for end users.

Read the rest after the jump: “We (and this includes the media) tend to focus too much on plumbing and not on applications,” he says. Communications, he says, is a big trend, and people want to be able to communicate anywhere, anytime. “Imagine a time where nearly 70% home worldwide are connected via broadband,” says Templeton. Now the key is to figure out how to use it. From that stand point he says, that it doesn’t matter if the wireless technology is cellular or some other form of wireless connection. Despite that, Texas Instruments is a bit sanguine on WiMAX, a fixed wireless mobile technology that is being heavily promoted by Intel. In its initial form it is being seen as a T-1 replacement technology, but eventually as a last mile option to DSL and cable modem broadband. “The financial model for WiMAX is going to be a challenge in countries where broadband is already available,” he says. Despite a recent hiccup in its digital light processor chip business, Templeton remains confided about the technology and its future. He pointed out that it was in 1980s Texas Instruments started working on the digital signal processing business, and it’s only at the turn of the century it turned into a revenue gusher. Templeton predicts that it’s a matter of time DLP based projectors fall below $500 a pop, and will be small enough to slip in a bag and be used with game machines, personal digital assistants and other such gizmos. “I know one thing – if your customers continue to innovate around your platform, the markets will eventually happen,” says Templeton. That and paying attention to what consumers really want!